A Year and a Day in Old Theradane

By Scott Lynch

Theradane, a city of deep magic, ruled by a council of eternally feuding wizards. Theradane, a city of opportunity, where bold dreamers brave the fallout from the wizard wars to make their living. Theradane, a city of sanctuary, where wanted criminals from all over the world can pay a fortune to secure a safe place for their retirement.

Amarelle Parathis, the Duchess Unseen, one of the greatest thieves in history, was surviving such a retirement until she accidentally offended the powerful sorceress Ivovandas. Now Amarelle and her crew of brilliant misfits have a task: secretly steal an object of power from a rival wizard every bit as dangerous as Ivovandas. The object? A city street, hundreds of yards long, upon which thousands of people tread day and night. The stakes? Their freedom, very possibly their lives. The deadline? A year and a day.

Amarelle and her friends will need every minute of it...

Originally published in the 2013 anthology ROGUES, this acclaimed sword-and-sorcery novella from internationally best-selling fantasist Scott Lynch is now available as a digital single! As an added bonus, enjoy a lengthy preview of "The Cobbler's Boy," a short novel from Elizabeth Bear and Katherine Addison!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Scott Lynch
• Release date: Jun 24, 2019
• ISBN: 9780692192122

Scott Lynch

Author of the internationally best-selling Gentleman Bastard sequence, Scott has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award, the Locus Award, the Campbell Award, and the Compton Crook Award. He received the British Fantasy Society Award for Best Newcomer in 2008. Scott was born in 1978 in St. Paul, Minnesota, the first of three brothers. At various times he was a dishwasher, a waiter, a graphic designer, an office manager, a prep cook, and a freelancer/self-publisher in the gaming field, before accidentally selling his first novel in 2004. After training at Anoka Technical College in Minnesota in 2005, Scott joined his local fire department in St. Croix County, Wisconsin and served as a paid-on-call firefighter for eleven years. In 2016, Scott moved to Massachusetts and married his longtime partner, famed SF/F writer Elizabeth Bear.

Book preview

A YEAR AND A DAY IN OLD THERADANE

The Theradane Cycle: 1

by Scott Lynch

© 2018 Scott Lynch

Published by Scott Lynch at Smashwords

All Rights Reserved

First Edition, 2018

ISBN 978-0-692-19212-2 (ebook)

The Cobbler's Boy

© 2018 Sarah Monette and Sarah Wishnevsky

Excerpted by permission of the authors.

Designed by: Scott Lynch

Cover Background: Alexandr Mituic (Used Under License)

Table of Contents

Author’s Note

A Year and a Day in Old Theradane

About the Author

Other Short Works by Scott Lynch

Novels by Scott Lynch

Preview of The Cobbler's Boy

Author’s Note

With this story, my small but growing library of digital fiction returns to the subject that has somehow become my bread and butter, fantastical crime. In 2012, Gardner Dozois and George R.R. Martin announced their plan to produce a massive prestige anthology of original fantasy tales called Rogues, which promised to be eight hundred pages of shenanigans by twenty-one shenanigan scribblers.

I was flattered and delighted to be invited as a contributor, the very first chance (of an eventual four) I would ever have to work with Gardner. I have a vague recollection of either George or Gardner telling me at some point that they regretted being unable to invite me to an earlier anthology, Songs of the Dying Earth: Short Stories in Honor of Jack Vance. In one sense that was unfortunate, for I am a tremendous appreciator of Vance's utterly unique work, but in every other way it was a sound decision on their part, as the invitation would have come during that span of years when I was most damaged and useless (a span I have described quite sufficiently elsewhere, and will not bore you with here), and I have no illusions that I would have been able to produce any sort of creditable story during that period.

Happily, a couple years later I was a less shambolic human organism, and when the invitation to Rogues came I was beside myself with eagerness to be at it and give my own formula a bit of a Vancian science fantasy twist. Despite the difficulties of my anxiety and depression, which both dragged at me as I wrote, A Year and a Day in Old Theradane provided one of the most enjoyable working times of my career, and perhaps one of the most personally important. Not only did it seem to confirm that I had at last figured out how to write short fiction on a recurring basis, it was very generously received by the readers of Rogues, was nominated for a Locus Award, and cemented a satisfying working relationship with Gardner that did not end up lasting anywhere near as long as I would have liked.

Gardner Dozois passed away on May 27, 2018, not long after finalizing some edits on my story The Fall and Rise of the House of Malkuril for the forthcoming (at the time of this writing) anthology The Book of Magic. He was, in my too-brief experience, an immensely patient and supportive editor, enduring much as I struggled to keep my anxiety attacks under control and finish my pieces for him, never once giving me anything less than an overflowing surplus of the time, room, and encouragement I needed.

Gardner's many kindnesses made this story possible, and so this new digital edition of A Year and a Day in Old Theradane is gratefully dedicated to his lasting memory.

Scott Lynch

South Hadley, Massachusetts

September, 2018

A YEAR AND A DAY IN OLD THERADANE

1. Wizard Weather

It was raining when Amarelle Parathis went out just after sunset to find a drink, and there was strange magic in the rain. It came down in pale lavenders and coppers and reds, soft lines like liquid dusk that turned to luminescent mist on the warm pavement. The air itself felt like champagne bubbles breaking against the skin. Over the dark shapes of distant rooftops, blue-white lightning blazed, and stuttering thunder chased it. Amarelle would have sworn she heard screams mixed in with the thunder.

The gods-damned wizards were at it again.

Well, she had a thirst, and an appointment, and odd rain wasn’t even close to the worst thing that had ever fallen on her from the skies over Theradane. As she walked, Amarelle dripped flickering colors that had no names. She cut a ghostly trail through fog that drifted like the murk beneath a pink and orange sea. As usual when the wizards were particularly bad, she didn’t have much company. The Street of Pale Savants was deserted. Shopkeepers stared forlornly from behind their windows on the Avenue of Seven Angles.

This had been her favorite sort of night, once. Heavy weather to drive witnesses from the streets. Thunder to cover the noise of feet creeping over rooftops. These days it was just lonely, unpredictable, and dangerous.

A double arc of silvery lights marked the Tanglewing Canal Bridge, the last between her and her destination. The lights burned within lamps held by rain-stained white marble statues of shackled, hooded figures. Amarelle kept her eyes fixed on her feet as she crossed the bridge. She knew the plaques beneath the statues by heart. The first two on the left, for example:

BOLAR KUSS

TRAITOR

NOW I SERVE THERADANE ALWAYS

CAMIRA THOLAR

MURDERESS

NOW I SERVE THERADANE ALWAYS

The statues themselves didn’t trouble her, or even the lights. So what if the city lit some of its streets and bridges with the unshriven souls of convicts, bound forever into melodramatic sculptures with fatuous plaques? No, the trouble was how those unquiet spirits whispered to passers-by.

Look upon me, beating heart, and witness the price of my broken oaths.

Fuck off, Bolar, muttered Amarelle. I’m not plotting to overthrow the Parliament of Strife.

Take warning, while your blood is still warm, and behold the eternal price of my greed and slaughter!

I don’t have a family to poison, Camira.

Amarelle, whispered the last statue on the left. It ought to be you up here, you faithless bitch.

Amarelle stared at that last inscription, just as she promised herself she wouldn’t every time she came this way.

SCAVIUS OF SHADOW STREET

THIEF

NOW I SERVE THERADANE ALWAYS

I never turned my back on you, Amarelle whispered. I paid for sanctuary. We all did. We begged you to get out of the game with us, but you didn’t listen. You blew it.

You bent your knees to my killers before my flesh was even cold.

We all bought ourselves a little piece of the city, Scav. That was the plan. You just did it the hard way.

Some day you will share this vigil with me.

I’m done with all that now. Light your bridge and leave me alone.

There was no having a reasonable conversation with the dead. Amarelle kept moving. She